


Not Rose

by InsomniacCyanide



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Character Study, F/M, allusions to rosemary
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-21
Updated: 2016-06-21
Packaged: 2018-07-16 10:17:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,820
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7263904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InsomniacCyanide/pseuds/InsomniacCyanide
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She is not Rose Lalonde.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not Rose

She is sharp, like glass, but she is not fragile.  
Her edges are sharpened, and her fists are raised and she is always prepared. She doesn’t want to fight constantly, but she will. She will fight, she will become the storm she is assumed to be. She rolls like thunder, and her eyes reflect her turmoil. When she drinks, she drinks to die. She doesn’t drink to feel; she drinks to numb. She drinks to quiet the roiling voices of the lost in her skull, and she hushes them. She feeds them falsehoods just to hear them rile themselves up, and smirks when they realize she’s battling demons for fun.  
Her feet are swift when she wills them to be, and her mind is less than prepared to face any aspect of defeat. She doesn’t want to fail. Not because it means death, oh no, she yearns for that, but because she is uncertain where her ends lie. She doesn’t know if she is part of the main timeline where things go correctly or not. But she supposes her actions don’t matter much in the long-run, now do they? Because she’s a backstory, and she’s bitter about it.  
It’s a shame she had to become what she was now. She’s volatile, and feels older than she is. She remembers burning, she remembers feeling her skin skitter off of her and reform and become softer than before, and she remembers seeing out of the third eye fully for the first time due to it. Her hands shake around the bottle. She knows what they are, she knows everything because she’s seen everything.  
When he sits beside her, she stops shaking. Not because he calms her, no, he sets her on edge, he raises her spines and her hackles and every defense she has. She does this because he is fragile. If she slips and allows herself to appear as what she is, he will break, he will feel for her, and feeling for her is painful, she knows it. She’s not easy to love.  
She’s so difficult to love. She’s haunted by the repressed feelings of affection, because of a silly taboo that holds no weight anymore. He doesn’t care for it, and steps back only on her behalf. She hates him for it. She wants him to be vindictive, to be as aggressive and torn apart as she is. But he’s not, and he will never be what she is. She’s grateful for that. She walks a fine line, between going mad and being the sanest she’s been in years.  
She hates that thought, going crazy. But it’s hard to deny. It’s hard to deny when whenever she gazes out of the third eye now, her body fails and buckles under her. And it’s so hard to stop herself from seeing out of the third eye, because she’s grown accustomed to it’s presence, in this life and the last. She’s grown so familiar with that third eye, and seeing with it feels natural, because it is for her.  
She only gazes out of it when he’s around now, because he understands enough to prop her up on pillows and to leave her be until she finds herself out from under it’s intoxicating control. She enjoys gazing out of the third eye, because she can feel like a goddess again, she can feel as powerful as she is. She can feel the hum of a newly bred powerhouse under her skin, and she can feel the sun in her eyes and she can feel as if she’s what she was meant to be. That’s what tears her up inside. She grows dependent on the eye, too dependent, for her self-worth.  
She despises the days where she gazes out of the third eye and sees the future, her future. The elders guide her towards what they need to get done, and she feels like a puppet. Nothing she does matters, nor will it ever, because she’s a backstory. She hates feeling so angry at children that have yet to exist yet, and even then they don’t deserve her wrathful gaze, but it always feels like their fault that she is so inadequate. It feel like it’s their fault that she is out of control.  
He guides the bottle from her hands, and she cracks, she can’t hold it any longer. Her spikes sheathe, her hackles lower, she’s no longer a weapon. She was always a weapon, or a tool, or a pawn, she wanted to play the game, not just exist in it. His hands find her face, and she shakes once more, the memory of what they used to be playing on repeat. He doesn’t know what to do, she can feel it, he has no idea how to console her. She throws caution to the wind.  
It will never fix things, the way he kisses her back, but it serves as a very adequate distraction. His lips are soft, and hers are chapped. His body is long and sharp and bony, and hers is soft and small and pliant. He is warm, and she is cold. They clash, and he is passion and fire and he burns her. She is so cold, and moves against him like waves. He burns her, and she enjoys the burn. It reminds her of her rebirth, it reminds her of glory, of dying and having a part of herself die and the other, greater version living on in visions.  
She knows she is but a child in these memories, she knows she’s a small brat with no appreciation for a mother or a guiding hand or a supportive assembly of friends and romantic inclinations. She feels nothing for the troll girl that her other self felt for. Kanaya was a lovely young lady, but hardly fit for someone like her. Kanaya was too enabling, too supportive of whatever she did, Kanaya was motherly, but never harsh enough to stop what needed to be stopped.  
Her thoughts of green are interrupted by a blinding red that seeps into her skin and drowns her out. She’s not Rose anymore, she’s not an abandoned shell of a goddess who knew too much and learned too much and became too much and then had it all dropped to aid the real heroes of their joint session. She’s none of that. She’s a beautiful woman with a handsome young man holding her face gently and asking her why she does this to herself.  
She replies in the same way she always does, with harshness, with cold, with freezing depths of tumultuous waters and rapids that he still weathers for reasons she doesn’t understand. She doesn’t know why he puts up with her, why he allows himself to be swept up in her nihilistic stampedes against all things that hold any comfort for him. She doesn’t know why he allows himself to be beat up verbally by her drunken self who doesn’t know when to shut her mouth but she’s always drunk these days now because the elder ones will never shut up. She hates that he’s so kind and denying of his kindness because he does not deserve her cruelty. She knows he’s had enough of cruelty.  
So, she softens herself. She tries to hide her edges, her glass shards, her myriad of scars that don’t mean anything because they’re nothing compared to what she’s put this poor man through and what he’s been through in his other life. Because she sees through him too. She remembers his life as clearly as her own, she recalls every second of it. She remembers being scared, she remembers not wanting to worry others, she remembers molding herself into something she was not. She remembers all of that as if it were her there, and she understands. He is not one who fights, he is no warrior, as much as his title would disagree. He is not a hero. He is not meant to battle, to weather attack after attack and she should know this by now.  
She remakes her response; tells him she’s scared to keep living this way. She tells him that she sees everything so clearly and it’s so real and she can feel it in her hands. She can grasp at immortality; she can feel it in her cold palms. She tells him she wants to feel immortal, she wants to feel important because she deserves it. She is Rose Lalonde again, she is insecure and stupid, she is Rose and he is Dave and she loves him and she says it.  
He hugs her again, and she can tell he feels blessed by the occasion. She rarely opens up for him, she rarely opens up at all, and she hates that he feels this way. She becomes soft, she becomes the body she has, she becomes what she is expected to be in whatever inaccurate lore the ones after her will create. She becomes the stereotype, she is soft, and golden, and the romantic love interest to his ill-fitting hero storyline. Only for today. Only for now. She is still hardened, and blackened, and made of tar and brine. He knows this. He knows all of this will pass. She appreciates him not making the moment out to be something to frown upon.  
They kiss again. And she is no longer Rose Lalonde.  
She is still there, and he is still her anchor, and she loves him, she adores his actions and she loves him so much. But she is not Rose anymore. She realizes this, in that moment. She’s the dead mother merely mentioned passingly in a Disney movie, she’s the starting few notes before the real music begins, and she’s drowned out by the beat and the additions. She feels what power she thought she could emulate exit through her finger tips, she breathes it out harshly when they pull away from each other. She leaves it all, because she’s not a goddess, she’s not even a human being with the way she acts. She’s just a character, a being made of words and wars. And he is a fellow character, a better known martyr made of help and home. She feels home with him, and they are both backstories together, they are both displaced.  
They’re puzzle pieces from another puzzle, forced by little toddler hands into a different one. They’re forced to fit, to make a pretty picture, but her edges are too strong and his are too soft and they’re getting eaten alive. He clings to her, and she holds him, because she is not vulnerable like he is. Yes, she can be fragile in certain aspects, but she is not glass. She does not shatter, she holds. She is not opaque like glass, she is not see-through. She is cold. She is no one. She has nothing.

She is not Rose Lalonde.

**Author's Note:**

> just fuck me up


End file.
